Art and a pink monkeyflower in a native plant garden…

On the bottom floor of the Palace of Fine Arts Legion of Honor, next to the cafe, is a small gallery/room that contains some treasures. Each visit I make I am sure to pop in to see what is on display. Something always catches my imagination and blows my creative juices into the air. Last Thursday’s visit did not disappoint because the small gallery of Illustrated Books was focusing on “Inspired Alphabets”.

I walked into the room and was caught by the word circus…then lithography…if you have read this blog for a while you will recognize some of my favorite themes…

Then there was this fabulous collage book with collaged lettering…

More lithography…

And who knew Claes Oldenburg envisioned buildings and cities made from letters…

There is much to be said for the small book that can be held in one hand…with the power of the fold…

The letters themselves creating abstract art…and the overprint…

The Dada Movement…

Lifted by my interaction with the typography, I got home to a new visual journal I had under construction and had found the way I wanted to create the title page…

Thursday we visited the Palace of the Legion of Honor to see their “Monet, The Early Years” show.

When we started from home it was a drizzle and it stayed that way all across the city.

When we got to the museum there was no parking except miles and miles down the road. Two positives from that were adding multiple steps to our Fitbits and we were so far down the road we got the best view of the Golden Gate Bridge, ever.

The museum was more crowded than I had ever seen, so my pictures were hard to get. I was dodging around stationary people listening to handsets. Later we found out that it was a free day for KQED members. Oh, and it was Spring Break so there were lots of kids around. A sampling of the art when he was young:

Fishing Boats, 1866

A Hut at Sainte-Adresse, 1867

The Seine at Bougival, 1869

The Porte d’Amont, Etretat, ca. 1868-69

Still life with Flowers and Fruit, 1869

Camille on the Beach, 1870.

The Pont Neufchâtel in Paris, 1871

Argenteuil, 1872

Still Life with Melon, 1872

The Port at Argenteuil, 1872

Regatta at Argenteuil, 1872

The last one really shows him developing into Impressionism. The reflections on the water are delicious.

After wending our way through the legion of crowds, we drove over to Land’s End for lunch at the Cliff House. Didn’t get a table by the window, but that was ok, we got popovers…

Very happy that we made it home without a traffic jam and before a very big storm.

Yesterday I was motivated to work on mixing my own watercolors. The stars were aligned and I finally had all the supplies I needed. What had delayed me was not having watercolor half-pans to store the finished mixes in, but the last time I ordered a book from Amazon I remembered to order the little, white pans.

On our travels I had collected dry pigments as souvenirs. The first time was when we visited Roussillon in Provence back in 2013. (This may have been what spurred me on, also: we are taking an OLLI class through CAL—six weeks of talking and reading about Provence. It is bringing back lots and lots of memories.) In the Fall of 2015 when we were in Venice I visited a store that, among other things, carried pigments.

Roussillon

The red cliffs around Roussillon

Venice

My paint! The larger bottles are the pigment from Venice. (No, I did not have to carry those jars in my suitcase. They came in plastics bags and I put them in the jars from The Container Store after I got home.) The small vials are from Roussillon. The pigments are mixed with gum arabic and a bit of honey on a sheet of glass. Always wear a mask because the pigment in powder form is bad for your lungs. My only trouble now is I have already used up all the available half-pans so have to get more. Did not even get to experiment with my yellows and reds, yet…

“To live in this world, you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go”…Mary Oliver

A few months ago my stirling husband became so disgusted at the way our old iPad was working (as in slow and not responding) he decided to upgrade the device. His solution was to buy me a new one so he could remove all the photography apps from the old one. His goal was not to have them interfere with his reading and playing Sudoku. It worked for him and worked for me because I now have a new iPad Pro and Apple pencil. I have been blissfully happy trying to improve my skills. Here are my first excursions into the world of the Procreate App. What I liked about the process was taking photos from events years ago and reusing them. It was like I had a secret memory embedded in the images.

This was the oldest image that I took when I first retired. We were on a road trip and stopped to visit my lovely niece in Eugene, Oregon and she took us over to the Cascades Raptor Center. They have a beautiful Eurasian Eagle Owl and in my new version he got a new collaged background.

This image was from our last trip to Venice. It is a lesser known dome taken as we passed by on the vaporetto.

This was an altered image from a museum visit combined with some embroidery by an outsider artist that I took the first time I visited the Biennale in Venice. The peacock I photographed during my 50th high school reunion two years ago that took place at the Arcadia Arboretum. It was a challenge to get all the elements to fit but I learned a lot at I worked on it.

Of course, an image from Morro Bay and some lowly old pigeons…

An animatronic toy from a toy museum in a castle near Stresa, Italy.

I was trying hard to learn how to use the Procreate App with its amazing abilities. I am a long way from mastering it but totally enjoying the process of trying. Other apps used in these images are Brushstroke App, Repix App, and Over App (for letters).

I have subscribed to a magazine for a few years that tickles my fancy when it comes to creating. The magazine is called Uppercase and is published in Canada. One woman, Janine Vangool, is the publisher, editor, and designer and it is published for the “creative and curious”. Showcasing artists and crafts she periodically puts out a call for submissions on different topics, so when she asked for articles on the impact of growing up in a family where you were surrounded by art I could not resist a submission. It was my good fortune to have it accepted for publication. My article joined others exploring how creativity is passed down from generation to generation and how making is part of our heritage. (I think maybe being published had been on my bucket list…so, cross that one off! ) It certainly was a thrill the day the postman delivered my copy.

Here is the article with two lithographs by my father illustrating the text. Now I get to say if you want a subscription to this magazine, published four times a year, by using the code “summer30” you can receive $15.00 off for the year subscription. You could also purchase a single issue (# 30) here: http://shop.uppercasemagazine.com/collections/current-issue